Everyday's Most Quiet Need
by CitronPresse
Summary: Post episode 5.14. Lexie gently dismantles a cliché and tells Mark why she loves him. Pairing: Mark/Lexie.


A/N: A fluffy attempt to play with some post 5.14 ideas that were kicking around my mind. The title is taken from the same poem that Lexie briefly quotes during the fic.

* * *

"Happy Valentine's Day!"

"Mmggh!" Lexie only just succeeds in not recoiling from the face-full of bland-smelling hothouse roses that Mark flings under her nose. She's barely awake and she assumed he was in the bathroom or ordering breakfast and she'd been having vague, warm, half-dreamy thoughts about English muffins with grape jelly and orange juice and Mark coming back to bed. Now that's all shattered by the waxy, blood-red . . . seriously, _blood_-red roses.

"Thank you?" she says weakly, in the form of a question and Mark grins at her surreally. "Happy Valentine's Day to you too, I guess . . . except it's Thursday today."

He raises an eyebrow, confused, and looks at her blankly.

"Thursday the 12th," she says. "Of February. Valentine's Day is the 14th. Saturday." She sits up and yawns and stretches; when she's done he's sitting on the bed, his over-effusive and frankly slightly scary happiness suddenly deflated.

"They had them downstairs in the gift shop and I thought . . . you know . . . girls like . . . Shit!" He gives up and sighs.

"It's okay." She moves the roses out of the way to get a little closer to him, pricking herself on a thorn that's poking through the cellophane in the process; she forces herself not to wince. "They're lovely. Really." She's trying, but she knows she doesn't sound sincere. Instead of words, she strokes his shoulder, but he barely responds.

"You don't like them," he says.

"No. Really. They're lovely." She swallows: the more she insists, the worse it sounds and the more dejected he seems. "It's just . . . it doesn't really seem like your kind of thing," she says. "I never figured you for a Valentine's Day, steroid-fed roses kind of guy."

"You said we're in a relationship," he says quietly. "A relationship I can't get it together to tell Derek about." He sighs. "And you're still here, even though I can't give you the one thing you want and I wanted to show you that meant something."

When he's like this, he breaks her heart a little bit. Really, she's not the expert on relationships. Her parents had a good one, more or less, she thinks; her experiences of dating in high school and college and med school were the normal kind of uneventful serial monogamy that good girls go in for. But since she arrived here, she's hit on her sister's soul mate, screwed a man who totally forgot her, and indulged in possibly the world's most embarrassing ever publicly stalkerish crush. It's kind of sad that this awesome, sexy, kind-hearted man thinks that she's the one who has it together just because her level of fear and uncertainty is about a half step ahead of his. She _does_ want him to tell Derek; she wants to tell Meredith; she wants to tell everyone she knows. But, honestly, if it's going to stop him being himself and turn him into a half-hearted attempt at a Hallmark commercial, she'd rather have the dirty, secret flirting. Because at least, then, she would have _him_ and that's what she really wants.

"Anyway, you decorated O'Malley's locker," he says, interrupting her thoughts and she blushes a deep, mortified shade of red, possibly something approaching the color of the roses.

"You know about that?" she asks.

"The entire hospital knows about that," he says. He smirks a little, but he's still not himself and she knows it's up to her to make this better.

"I don't need roses," she says. "I don't need. . . I don't want you to be something different than you are. Because I know who you are, and I like who you are, and I want you to keep on doing exactly, precisely what makes you _you_. But . . . since we're doing the pre-Valentine's grand romantic cliché thing, here's my version." She clears her throat and sits up straight. "'_How do I love thee? Let me count the ways_.'"

Okay, so that got his attention! The look on his face is priceless — somewhere between irony and terror — and she has to stifle a laugh.

"Elizabeth Barrett Browning," she says. "It's a love poem."

"I believe I got that." He scratches his ear and narrows his eyes at her, clearly wondering what's coming next.

"You let me sleep in your Columbia sweatshirt," she begins. "You let me put my feet on you when they're cold, even though I know you hate it. You let me talk about my boring intern day, even though you could care less —"

"I like hearing you talk," he breaks in.

"I know," she says. "And that's another reason. But that's not the point. You tried to suffocate me with roses; now it's my turn, with words." She gives a little grin. "So shut up!"

He shuts up, obligingly but rolling his eyes, and she goes on.

". . . even though you could care less and you've seen and done and heard all it before. You listen to my ideas about patients and take them seriously. You catch my eye across the hallway. You kiss me, on my neck, just underneath my ear, and it's lovely."

Mark leans in and kisses her in that exact spot and she briefly closes her eyes with pleasure. "See? Lovely," she breathes. "You forgave me for breaking your penis. You let me be with you when you were in pain and humiliated even though you didn't want to and you didn't push me away or hit on nurses or tell me 'it's not you, it's me' afterwards." She swallows. "You make me feel unforgettable in bed. You're trying to tell Derek about us even though it's killing you. And you order me English muffins and grape jelly for breakfast . . . except today you didn't because you gave me roses instead, and that's my only complaint about you."

"You want an English muffin?" Mark asks.

Lexie nods.

"You don't want roses?"

She shakes her head.

"And I'm fine the way I am?" He sounds so uncertain and her heart breaks for him just a little bit more.

"You're fantastic," she whispers. "Now order breakfast and come back to bed and let's start the day again."


End file.
